Doha Hamad International Airport – Closer to Cracking the Top 50

Doha Hamad International Airport

One of the main ingredients of being a world class airport is having a hotel attached to it. As noted in our 2013 Busiest Airport Review (refer to link), of the 20 busiest airports by passengers, only 4 do not have this feature.

Introduction

In 2013, around 23.2 million passengers visited Doha International Airport. This would put the airport in the Top 75 busiest. With Qatar Airways (IATA Airline Code – QR) joining the One World Alliance in 2014 and projected passenger increases from the region and World Cup 2022, a new airport was built and opened in April 2014 just east of the old airport (close to the city centre – shown in map below).

Geography of New Doha Hamad International Airport (Screen shot taken from Google Map on November 13, 2014) (All Rights Reserved)

The new airport has more than 3 times the capacity (8 to 29 million) and can be expanded to manage over 90 million passengers through additional phases.

Image taken from http://hiahotel.com/sites/tah/files/documents/HIA_Airport_Hotel_Maps.pdf on November 13, 2014 (All Rights Reserved)

Opened today, the hotel features 100 rooms and suites and can be booked in blocks of time with access to a large number of restaurants and shopping onsite. The spa can be used by guests and non-guests and will include a full gym, squash courts and a 25-metre swimming pool.

Analysis

It was smart for the airport operator to build an airport on site to manage passenger expectations. This is especially important if an airport has high passenger volume from connections and would like to operate 24 hours.

Passengers would benefit greatly from time reduction spent on transportation, at check in and at security points (especially if they already have a new boarding pass in hand and went through transfer security checks ahead of time).

Observation – When we went online to check prices on November 23, 2014, we noted that we can only send reservation information for enquiry. We will consult the hotel operator to verify whether we can book rooms in real time in the future.